


American Poetry 1900-1950: The Drinking Game

by Minutia_R



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, Drinking Games, Gen, Literary Analysis, Probably-ineffective Study Methods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You know, it’s a well-known scientific fact that alcohol kills brain cells," said Mary.  "I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to work.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Whatever, dorkface.”  Lydia sat on the bed with a cheerful bounce.  “Haven’t you heard that everyone has their own style of learning?  And mine involves drinking, so quit oppressing me.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	American Poetry 1900-1950: The Drinking Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DWEmma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/gifts).



The tumblers rattled together when Lydia put them on Mary’s desk next to a brown paper bag with a bottle in it, because Lydia could never do anything quietly, and Mary jumped like it was the sound of her mother coming home.

“You know, it’s a well-known scientific fact that alcohol kills brain cells. I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to work.”

“Whatever, dorkface.” Lydia sat on the bed with a cheerful bounce. “Haven’t you heard that everyone has their own style of learning? And mine involves drinking, so quit oppressing me.” She leaned over, got the bottle out of the bag--it was some sort of off-brand vodka--wiggled it in Mary’s face, and went on in a sing-song voice, “Besides, this was your idea.”

Mary took the bottle. The label looked like it had been made on someone’s home printer and they were running out of black ink. “It was a joke,” she muttered.

“Yeah, right, like you’d know a joke if it bit you on the ass. Come on, crack open the anthology and let’s get this party started!”

On the List of Things Lydia Bennet Is Unlikely to Ever Say, Mary would have put _crack open the anthology_ in the top five easily. Trying to get her to focus on work during their tutoring sessions, instead of chattering about boys, whining about her family, or mocking Mary’s life choices, was like trying to drag a hyperglycemic toddler past a toy store. Lydia reluctant to study was exhausting. Lydia eager to study was . . . disturbing. And potentially twice as exhausting. The vodka was starting to look pretty good, actually.

Mary cracked open the anthology. Lydia poured both tumblers full of vodka. “Okay, first poem . . . The Hill Wife, by Robert Frost.” Mary cleared her throat self-consciously. “Loneliness. Her Word. One ought not to have to care--”

“That’s what I keep _saying_ ,” said Lydia. “But they keep giving us tests on these poems anyway.”

“Shut up,” said Mary. “New rule. You interrupt, you finish the glass.” Maybe Lydia would drink so much so fast she’d pass out and then they’d be done with this.

But instead Lydia shut up, and even looked like she was listening until Mary got to the part about “I didn’t like the way he went away. That smile! It never came of being gay.”

“You said gay!” Lydia called out triumphantly. “Take a sip.”

Mary buried her head in her hands. “This is so mature.”

“No excuses,” said Lydia.

Mary took a sip, coughed, and blinked back tears. “What is this swill? Did you go to the liquor store and tell the guy, ‘give me a bottle of the cheapest, most vile rotgut imaginable?’”

“Obviously.” Lydia shrugged unrepentantly. “You can have Grey Goose when some dude is buying. Lydia Bennet’s Rules of Life, number 48.”

“No, I can’t. Eddie’s budget doesn’t stretch to Grey Goose either, and I don’t accept drinks from strange men in bars.”

“Your loss. Go on, make with the poetry.”

Mary managed to make it through to the end of the poem without any more forfeits. “So, what do you think it means?” she said.

“Well . . . it’s like it says at the beginning, right? Caring too much, that’s the problem. Caring about a couple of stupid birds building a nest, or what some smelly-ass hobo thinks of you, or being scared of a branch banging against your window at night. Once you stop caring, you can do whatever you want.” Lydia’s shoulders were turned inward, and her hair hung forward, hiding her face. “Wish I could. Just . . . what’s it say?” She pulled the book over to her. “‘Sudden and swift and light as that.’ Wish I could.”

Were they having a moment? Mary hoped they weren’t having a moment. “You know . . . that’s a pretty valid interpretation of the poem,” she said. “Your turn.”

“Okay . . . Ezra Pound, Portrait Dune Femme. Wasn’t that a trippy movie with Sting in it? My dad tried to make me watch it once.”

“D’une. It’s French. It means Portrait of a Lady, and I think you have to take a drink now because you didn’t pronounce the apostrophe.”

“Pronounce the apostrophe. The fuck.” Lydia sipped and wrinkled her nose. “This is awful. Who bought this stuff?”

It had probably been a mistake to give Lydia Ezra Pound. She stumbled over _Sargasso_ and _uxorious_ and _ambergris_ and _deciduous_ , and each mispronunciation made the problem worse; by the end of the poem she was giggling and finding it hard to get through _nothing_. “Sooo . . . what d’you think it means?” she said when she’d finished.

Mary considered. “I think it means Ezra Pound was a sexist douchebag.”

“Sounds about right,” said Lydia. “Your turn.”

Mary took back the anthology. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot. S’io cred . . . ess? The fuck, is this whole thing in Italian or something? No fair!”

“Suck it up, apostrophe girl.”

It was only the first stanza that was in Italian; Mary got through it but Lydia was refilling her tumbler and the room was starting to tilt by the end.

“God, can you imagine going on a date with this guy?” said Lydia. “Do I dare to order the lobster salad? Shall we see the new Star Trek movie? Forsooth! My heart has been rebooted!”

Mary must have been drunk because she was laughing like a loon at one of Lydia’s jokes. Lydia reclaimed the book while Mary was still doubled over.

“Okay! Wallace Stevens, The Red Wheelbarrow. So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.” Lydia flapped the page back and forth. “That’s it? Seriously?”

“Well, I think . . . because the poem is so short . . .” Mary pronounced her words deliberately, afraid she’d lose track of them otherwise. “No, listen-- _because_ the poem is so short, each word is important, right? And life is really short . . . so, like, everything depends on little things and oh God this is such bullshit I can’t.”

“Ha! You gave up! Finish the glass!”

Mary swirled the liquid in her tumbler. It didn’t smell quite as bad now as when she’d started. “I,” she said, lifting her drink in a toast to Lydia, “have earned this.”

“Your turn,” said Lydia, plopping the book down on Mary’s lap.

“Edna. Saint. _Vincent._ ” Damn it, Mary could do this, none of these words had more than two syllables. “Millay. First Fig. My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—it gives a lovely light! That sounds like you. You know. The way you live.” Definitely too much to drink.

“Heh, you said ‘both ends,’” Lydia snickered. “Take a drink.”

Then it was Lydia’s turn, and she managed to drunkenly slur their way through Marianne Moore’s “The Fish.”

“It means she drank like one,” Mary decided. “How else do you come up with that stuff?”

“Makes perfect sense t’me,” Lydia hiccupped. She pushed the book towards Mary, but since she was trying to push it across the bed, it only humped up a little bit while the pages flopped sadly. “Here you go. Langston Hughes. Something about a phone bill. Finally a poem that speaks to me on a deep personal level.”

After this monumental effort of speech, Lydia collapsed backward onto the bed, her hiccups interspersed with giggles as she listened to Mary read.

“ . . . You say I gave my O.K.? Well, that O.K. you may keep—but I sure ain’t gonna pay!” Mary finished. Then she looked at the clock. “I think our hour’s up,” she said. “Like, an hour and a half ago.”

“Shit!” Lydia sat up. “I gotta get home!”

Mary shoved her back onto the bed. “Like you’re driving anywhere like this, dorkface,” she said. “I’ll make up the guest room. You’ve slept there often enough.”

“But I got a test tomorrow,” Lydia said. “‘Merican poetry. Pretty sure.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mary. “You’ve got this one. Guaranteed.”

Mary went to get sheets for the guest bed. Her head cleared a little as she worked, but it was lucky this was something she could do on autopilot. The bed made, she went back to her room, where Lydia was passed out, snoring softly with her hand on her belly and her hair spread out over the pillow like a candle flame.

And Mary tried really hard not to remember Lydia’s comments about both ends, because there were things she didn’t want to think about even when she was three sheets to the wind, and her cousin’s pubic hair or lack thereof was definitely on the list.

She pulled the blanket over Lydia and went off to sleep in the guest room herself.

**Author's Note:**

> I got the title of the story and the poems therein (except when I thought it would be funnier to use a different poem by one of the same authors) from [the following random syllabus](http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/syllabi/nelson2.htm) that Google turned up for me.


End file.
